Pakistan backs off account of Bhutto death

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The Pakistani government has backed off earlier statements that opposition leader Benazir Bhutto died not from a bullet but because the force from a suicide blast forced her head into a sunroof crank, crushing her skull.

After increasing public uproar over the government investigation, the Interior Ministry issued a statement Tuesday saying there was “no intention to conceal anything from the people of Pakistan.”

Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Monday even asked people and the media to forgive and ignore the comment made Friday night about the sunroof by Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Cheema told CNN he based his statement about the sunroof lever “on the initial investigations and the reports by the medical doctors” who treated Bhutto. He said the ministry would wait for forensic investigators to finish their report before making any more conclusions about her cause of death.

“I was just narrating the facts, you know, and nothing less, nothing more,” he said Tuesday.